For baseball fans, the end
of the SuperBowl is generally viewed as the official
beginning of the baseball season. But Iíd like to take an extra moment or two
to mull over what was an extraordinary Superbowl.
This is a little off my beaten path but not completely out of my depth as Iíve
written about football before. The game certainly had its fair share of
exciting and memorable moments. Had it not been for Seattleís final offensive play, Jermaine Kearse and/or Chris Matthews might have entered the
pantheon of unlikely postseason heroes. But their efforts will forever be
overshadowed by the play that will haunt Seattle
and their fans for a long time: the decision to throw the ball on second down
and goal with only a half a yard separating them from victory. The decision has
been widely criticized but there has sprung up a kind of cottage industry to
defend head coach Pete Carrollís and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevillís decision to pass. So was the play call justified?
Itís worthy of a deeper look.

But before we get going in
earnest, many of Carrollís defenders are starting the conversation with his
resume, which according to them includes one Superbowl
win and two college national titles. For the record, Pete Carroll has not won
two NCAA championships. In fact, he has not won any. The first he is being
credited with was for the 2003 season, but that year USC didnít even play for
the championship; LSU and Oklahoma
did. USC was voted by the writers as the nationís top team, but the actual NCAA
championship went to the winner of the BCS title game, which for the 2003
season was the Sugar Bowl winner, LSU. You can whine about the fairness of
inviting Oklahoma to that game instead of USC
but the numbers favored Oklahoma
which is why the BCS ranked them higher. And since the BCS was created solely
to obviate the writerís vote due to the debacle of Brigham Youngís 1984 title,
the writerís vote was irrelevant as the final arbiter. The BCS ranking, which
was the voice of the coaches as well, was the only opinion that mattered. The
following year USC legitimately played in the national championship game and
beat Oklahoma.
But that win was later vacated when it was discovered that USC had committed
serious recruiting violations. As far as the records are concerned there was no
national champion that year. So no, Pete Carroll has not won two national
championships. He was voted one by a group that didnít matter, and his team
scored the most points in a championship game in which he was essentially
caught cheating.

OK, so now letís get to the
play in question. Should Seattle,
as the dominant sentiment has suggested, have given the ball to Marshawn Lynch? Was that a no-brainer? Or was this simply a
matter of result; had the pass worked would we be saying it was a great call?
Letís look at the componentsÖ

Seattle was the #1 rushing team in
the NFL, carrying the ball for 172 yards per game, which was 26 more yards per
game than the #2 team, the Dallas Cowboys. They averaged an impressive 5.3
yards per carry as a team and led the #2 team by .6 yards per attempt. The last
team to lead the league in yards per attempt by a greater margin was the 1997
Detroit Lions with Barry Sanders rushing for more than 2000 yards by himself.
Conversely, the Seahawks were the #27 ranked passing offense in terms of
yardage and tied for #22 in passing touchdowns with teams like the Tennessee
Titans, who won only two games. Even the three-win Oakland Raiders threw more
touchdown passes than the Seahawks. Thatís not to say that Seattle did not possess the ability to pass
but it is abundantly clear that the passing game was not their emphasis or
strength. They were efficient but far from prolific. More than 45% of their
yardage came from running the ball.

Defensively, the Patriots
were middle of the pack defending the pass (16th in yardage, tied for 12th in
turnovers, 12th in scoring). Against the run, they were better: 8th in yardage,
tied for 13th in turnovers, 2nd in scoring. So the Patriots were clearly better
at defending the run, but they were not historically good. All things being
equal, passing was slightly preferred as a way to attack them but it wasnít a
glaring weakness, and certainly not so much that a team that clearly favors the
run should change their character for one game.†

To the situation at hand,
according to Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, the Patriots allowed opponents
to score 81% of the time in power situations (runs on 3rd/4th down & less
than 2 yards to go or within 2 yards of the goal line). That was the worst mark
in NFL. On the offensive side, Seattle
was second in the league in those same power situations, getting stopped just
17% of the time. Lynch himself converted 17 of 20 3rd/4ths & short this
year. So the situation heavily favored a Seattle
run. In fact, there wasnít a better match-up to be had.

How about the actual
players involved? As mentioned, Lynch was pretty strong in important short
yardage situations. If the statistics are adjusted to context neutral, he was
the #1 running back in the NFL last year when it came to yardage from rushing.
In addition, he led all backs in touchdowns scored and lost only one fumble all
year. In the game he had rushed 24 times for 102 yards. In 22 of those 24
attempts he had rushed for at least 1 yard and only five times had been slowed
for less than 3. Basically he had a 91.6% chance of scoring on the next play if
they handed him the ball, and Seattle
still had two more downs to try again if he had been stopped. He was about as
safe a bet to score a touchdown from a half yard away as there is in the NFL.

Seattle also had a quarterback who had rushed for 849 yards
during the regular season (7.2 yards per carry), a total that tied for 16th
best among all NFL players. To give an idea of how impressive a runner Russell
Wilson is, in the history of the game only five other QBs
have rushed for more than 800 yards in a season: Colin Kaepernick,
Robert Griffin III, Michael Vick (twice), Randall Cunningham and Bobby
Douglass. Wilson
had already run for 39 yards on three carries during the game. He clearly had
the wheels to cover half a yard, especially on a misdirection play or on a
simple quarterback sneak.

So itís acceptable to
suggest that giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch wasnít
completely a no-brainer; they could have let Russell Wilson run it, too.†††

But thatís not what they
chose.

Seattle decided it would be better to let Russell Wilson
throw it. Unfortunately for the Seahawks, heís not nearly as impressive a
passer as he is a runner. His completion rate for the game to that point was
under 60%. During the regular season his efficiency was 63.1% which ranked 23rd
among QBs who had thrown at last 100 passes, behind
such passers as Mark Sanchez and Jay Cutler, both of whom are better known for
throwing interceptions than touchdowns. Not to say he was a bad QB; no, his QB
rating was solid, ranking 11th overall and his yard per attempt ranked 12th.
However, much of that was due to his ability throwing the long ball, where he
ranked 7th overall in pass plays of greater than 20 yards. This discrepancy
would then seem to indicate that short passes were not his forte. That theory
is supported by the fact that Wilson
ranked 19th in the number of passes for a first down, and 20th in percentage of
his passes for first downs and 33rd in attempts per game. His value as a passer
derives almost entirely from throwing a few well-placed long balls.

And he was just coming off
a miraculous win for the Seahawks in which he threw 4 interceptions. That was by
far the worst performance of his career, but it is something that Carroll and
company should have kept in the back of their collective minds, that asking him
to throw was not as safe an option as it might have been had Seattle had a different QB. And in general,
throwing the ball over the middle into traffic was probably not a great idea
either. It is the pass play with the greatest risk of bad things happening. A
tipped ball likely results in an interception with so many people near the
ball. If the receiver catches it, heís open to especially jarring collisions
that could cause a fumble with defenders flying from the opposite direction.
And if he does not get into the end zone, precious seconds tick off the
clock.†

What about his intended
target, Ricardo Lockette? He had caught only 11
passes during the regular season and was arguably their 5th best receiving
target behind Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse, Chris
Matthews and Lynch. The latter three had been making big catches all game. One
could also throw in tight end Luke Wilson as a better option since the Patriots
were 30th best in the NFL at defending against tight ends but apparently Seattle forgot they could
throw to the tight end because they did not attempt it even once during the
game.

So Seattleís brain trust
opted to forsake the highest percentage chance to score the winning touchdown,
as well as the variation on that option by running the quarterback, but instead
chose let a quarterback who wasnít even in the top half of the league in
passing efficiency attempt a pass that heís not particularly practiced or adept
at completing, throwing to the teamís 5th or 6th best receiving option. Sure,
thatís a surprising strategy for the opposition in much the same way that
asking Bartolo Colon to hit and run in the ninth
inning of Game 7 of the World Series would be. Or as one popular internet meme
put it, telling your team to give Bill Cartwright the final shot of Game 7 when
Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen are on the team. Surprising,
for sure. But smart?

As for Carroll's excuse
that the Patriots had stacked the box and that's the reason they decided to
pass, that's pretty weak sauce. Over the last three years, Seattle made its reputation by rushing the
ball, even against teams that had stacked their defenses against the run. They
prided themselves on that ability even to the point of arrogance. But with the
season on the line and a chance to win a second consecutive championship by
going with their bread and butter, they suddenly decided to go in the opposite
direction and become a West Coast offense like Bill Walsh's 49ers? Thanks, but
no sale.

As for the cottage
industry, the most well-written defense was probably offered
here. First, there are several significantly flawed assumptions in this
piece. For one, it assumes that the Seahawks are like other NFL teams. They
clearly are not.† The breakdown of how
their offense succeeds reveals they are not a typical offensive team. How often
has a team had such a dominating running game featuring the best running back
in the league and one of the top rushing quarterbacks in history? In 2012, the
Redskins featuring Alfred Morris and RGIII led the NFL in overall rushing
yardage and finished 2nd in yards per carry. In 2004, the Michael Vick-led
Atlanta Falcons led the NFL in overall rushing yards and yards per attempt but
their top rusher, Warrick Dunn, rushed for roughly 500 yards fewer than the
leagueís top RB, Curtis Martin. And thatís it. One has to go back before the
1967 merger to find rushing RB/QB tandems as potent. And the last time a Superbowl contender depended on rushing the ball for as
much as 45% of its yardage? The 1986 Chicago
Bears. The 2008 New York Giants came close but basically one has to go back
more than 30 years to find similar successful rush-dependent offenses like Seattleís. So applying
general assumptions about how the rest of the league currently prosecutes offense
is a poor fit to model how Seattle
should.

Secondly, the Patriots
would not have had 20 seconds left as the writer asserts. Had Lynch run the
ball and not scored, Seattle
controlled when the clock would have been stopped. They could have run it down
as far as they wanted and then called a timeout. Again, they had two
opportunities to run the ball regardless if they needed a third play. But letís
assume for the sake of argument that they scored with Lynch on second down.
First of all, running plays take more time off the clock than passing plays so
more seconds would likely have ticked off. Additionally Lynchís no-surrender
style of running would have undoubtedly run off an extra second before the
clock was stopped unless the Patriots completely blew their scheme and allowed
him to coast in. But even giving in to the wildly optimistic assumption that he
scored with 20 seconds left, the Seahawks would still have had to kick the
extra point and kick the ball off back to the Patriots. Unless the Patriots downed
the ball on the kick-off, a few more seconds would have run off. The Seahawks
could have forced that issue with a squib kick down the field, ticking off a
few more seconds. Depending on where the ball ended up being downed itís not
unreasonable to suggest that the Patriots could have been left with 15 seconds
or less.

That would have been enough
time to possibly run two plays and then attempt a field goal. The Patriots had
two time-outs. If they had started their final drive from the 35 (which seems
pretty optimistic) they would have had to cover 25 yards in two plays in order
to attempt a 57-yard field goal, which would have broken the current Superbowl record for longest field goal by 3 yards. Brady
had completed only 2 of 6 passes for 20 yards or more so they would have likely
needed a couple of short-medium distance passes. That would have been an
interesting challenge given that Julian Edelman, Bradyís top target for the
game, was possibly out from a blow to the head suffered during the previous drive.
Itís possible for a well-disciplined team like the Patriots to accomplish what
was needed even without their top receiver, but even under the most ideal
circumstances the writer acknowledges that even with 20 seconds left the
Patriots would have had only had a 5% chance to attempt a tying kick. Not for a
win. A tie. Given that Brady had already thrown 2
interceptions in the game, I donít think itís unreasonable to suggest that the
Seahawk defense wasnít facing Brady in his prime and that he was less than
infallible, even in crunch time. So even under the most ideal circumstances,
had Seattle
scored without any clock manipulations the Patriots had less than a 5% chance
to tie the game and force overtime.

Here is the most important
point that needs to be made, a point which appears to be lost on the 538
writer: it does not matter when the winning points were scored, only that they
get scored. It is impossible to win a game with fewer points than your opponent
has. Far more often than not in professional sports, one does not get to choose
when points will be scored. So when given an opportunity, you better score
them. That Pete Carroll felt he could waste a play and still win reveals the
magnitude of his hubris, for which he deserves this comeuppance. His team was
competing against the only team left in the competition for the title of best
team in the league, yet he believed his team could score whenever the whim
suited him, despite more than 59 minutes of game play evidence to the contrary.
Wasting a play should not have even been a consideration. Like the writer at
538, the Seahawks offensive brain trust simply over-thought this one. Sometimes
there is a right answer and itís the obvious one.

My own opinion is that had Seattle scored on the
pass we might have termed it a gutty call (and an incredibly lucky result), but
it was not a great call, like, say, an onside kick to start the second half.
Effectively, this choice reduced Seattleís chances for winning the game from
99% to 1% in one play (in the interest of precision, the actual win probability
went from 85% - having the ball on the half yard line on second down with 26
seconds left down 4 points - to 0.2% - not having the ball and down by 4 points
with 20 seconds left). Taking a risk that great when there is a less risky path
that gets you to the same place is never a great call, regardless of the
outcome. That is the real no-brainer.